Spinning a Tangled Web—Again

Why Sony is starting a new 'Spider-Man' franchise just 10 years after the last one; Peter Parker's contacts

ENLARGE

THE SHOOTIST In the coming 'The Amazing Spider-Man,' Peter Parker, played by Andrew Garfield, shoots webbing out of devices constructed from old watches—not from his wrists.
Columbia Pictures

By

Rachel Dodes

Updated June 29, 2012 8:20 p.m. ET

In Sam Raimi's 2002 film "Spider-Man," a bespectacled high-school student named Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) becomes a crime-fighting vigilante after getting bit on the hand by a genetically modified spider. In Marc Webb's "The Amazing Spider-Man"—due July 3—a cooler, contact-lens wearing version of Peter, played by Andrew Garfield, also gets bit by a transgenic arachnid. But the resulting welt rises on his neck, and in 3-D.

Remakes and reboots are an increasingly important strategy for studios to introduce beloved characters to younger audience members while simultaneously capitalizing on the nostalgia of older ones. Releases planned for 2013 include "Man of Steel," a retelling of the Superman story, and "Robocop," based on the 25-year-old dystopian trilogy.

Even in a crowded field, Spider-Man stands out because of the comparatively short time between the original and the reboot—10 years—and the fact that Mr. Maguire was last seen spinning his web in 2007, in "Spider-Man 3."

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"When you get into acting you don't realize you're going to have to be a politician, saying 'Here's why it's not too soon,' " says actress Emma Stone, who plays Peter's girlfriend in the reboot. "I just hope people enjoy the movie."

For Sony Pictures, the studio behind both the previous Spider-Man movies and the coming one, a reboot was a way to escape the spiral of diminishing returns that typically accompanies successful franchises. While audiences sometimes decline over several sequels, costs such as actors' salaries inevitably escalate: Mr. Maguire, who was reportedly paid $4 million for the first "Spider-Man" movie, earned a reported $15 million plus 7.5% of the profits for his work in "Spider-Man 3." (A spokesperson for Mr. Maguire declined to comment.)

The anticipated budget for a fourth installation of the Spider-Man franchise starring Mr. Maguire—initially planned for the spring of 2011—exceeded the $260 million that was spent on "Spider-Man 3," and it wasn't even expected to be in 3-D. Mr. Webb's film, by contrast, cost around $200 million to make.

Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone star in "The Amazing Spider-Man," the latest reboot of the Spider-Man franchise. Watch a clip of the film. Video courtesy of Sony Pictures.

With sequels, "you get yourself into a place where it becomes this beast, and it gets riskier and riskier," says
Matt Tolmach,
a producer of Mr. Webb's film and a former co-president of production at Sony.

After several failed attempts by various screenwriters to create an approved script in time for the preplanned release date, Messrs. Raimi and Maguire quit the project. "The movie they wanted wasn't there," says Sony Pictures Co-Chairman
Amy Pascal.
(Mr. Raimi didn't respond to a request for comment.)

Avi Arad, a producer of both Mr. Raimi's Spider-Man franchise and Mr. Webb's film, said that he and Sony executives also feared that if they proceeded with "Spider-Man 4" and it wound up getting critically panned, "We would have gone to Spider-Man movie jail for many years, like what happened with Batman."

The first Batman franchise, which Warner Bros. launched in 1989, is considered a cautionary tale in the movie business. Following the poorly received fourth installment, "Batman & Robin," in 1997, the caped hero didn't return to movie screens until 2005, with a successful reboot under the auspices of director Christopher Nolan. (His final Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," will be released July 20.)

Mr. Webb was an unusual choice to take the helm of a multibillion-dollar franchise. The former music-video director's first feature film, "(500) Days of Summer," is the antithesis of a summer blockbuster. The 2009 movie, which cost just $7.5 million to make, centered on the failed relationship between a greeting-card writer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and an office assistant (Zooey Deschanel). But the "Spider-Man" producers felt that if Mr. Webb could apply his skills in telling a relationship story to a 3-D extravaganza, it would be a hit.

There are substantial differences between Mr. Webb's version of the story and Mr. Raimi's: In the original, Peter's girlfriend was Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), an aspiring actress from a troubled home, and the villain was Norman Osborn, who was transformed into the mentally unstable Green Goblin. In Mr. Webb's story, Peter's love interest is Gwen Stacy (Ms. Stone), a science whiz who also happens to be the daughter of the police chief, and Spidey battles a one-armed scientist-turned-reptile who works for Mr. Osborn's company. In this version, Spider-Man's webbing shoots out of devices constructed out of old watches, not directly from Peter's wrists.

The decision to tweak the mythology stemmed from the feeling that "people don't want to revisit something they already knew," says Sony's Ms. Pascal, adding that in the original comics it was Gwen who was Peter's first love, not Mary Jane.

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